Neohelicon
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-018-0443-z
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah
Ruden’s translation of Lysistrata
David McCracken1
© Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2018
Abstract
Sarah Ruden provides the best translation of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. She effectively addresses feminism (as demonstrated by theories of Sheila Jeffreys and Naomi
Wolf) through transgressive writing for a contemporary audience. Ruden allows her
characters to establish a speech community through their language. The argument
that Ruden’s translation is superior is supported by a comparison of several passages
of Ruden’s Lysistrata to other translations, an examination of selected criticism of
Ruden’s Lysistrata, and a look at Ruden’s own commentary about her play.
Keywords Sarah Ruden · Lysistata · Sheila Jeffreys · Naomi Wolf · Transgression
Before 2012, I assigned Parker’s (2002) translation of Lysistrata in my World Literature I classes. I did not select this translation through careful and judicious planning. This version was in the Norton Anthology of World Literature, the text that was
chosen as the standard for that course, so Parker’s Lysistrata was read in the class
by default. One semester in 2013, I relied upon my academic hubris and did not
reread or even consult the Lysistrata translation in my book, and this was a tragic
mistake on an epic scale. When I walked into my classroom, I was faced with civil
disobedience. I teach at a small college in the Bible belt, and the twenty or so older,
non-traditional students were collectively outraged that I assigned what they considered to be a vulgar, profane, and obscene piece of pornography. My initial reaction
was to ask why they considered Parker’s portrayal of country folk, speaking in deep
Appalachian-hollows brogue or thick Southern-backwoods dialect, so offensive. I
quickly discovered Norton Publishing had substituted Parker’s translation with one
by Ruden. As a seasoned instructor, I reacted quickly by reading passages from
Parker’s translation and making comparisons between the versions.
A productive discussion resulted from what could have been a disastrous meeting. The students reported that they thought Ruden’s sex talk came right at them,
* David McCracken
dmccracken@coker.edu
1
Coker College, Hartsville, South Carolina, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
D. McCracken
unabashed and unadulterated, and they concluded that Norton editors made the
decision through their substitution to move Lysistrata from a country bumpkin to
a trash-talking diva. As almost always occurs, students began relating the literature
to popular culture, and they concluded Norton transformed Lysistrata from a character on The Beverly Hillbillies to one on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
They decided that Lysistrata’s language changed from the twangy dialogue heard
on the Squidbillies to the trashy conversations broadcast on Keeping Up with the
Kardashians.
The students in my class ultimately realized through textual comparisons that
Ruden offers the best translation of Lysistrata for a contemporary audience. They
actually admitted that they understood the purpose underlying Ruden’s choices,
thereby recognizing why certain words were selected and how those words influenced meaning. Furthermore, I came to the conclusion through subsequent research,
as that class sparked my own academic inquisitiveness, that Ruden’s Lysistrata is the
best translation for two important reasons. First, Ruden does not attempt to mask the
obvious transgressive nature of this play. She does not exchange paraphrases, synonyms, or euphemisms for sexually charged language, cultivating the tone and the
attitude for the play’s overall effect. Ruden’s choices make Lysistrata accessible for
a contemporary audience that is exposed to graphic sexual language, actually bombarded by it, through various media. Transgression is hip, and Ruden’s translation
is trendy. Second, Ruden is loyal to contemporary feminist ideology. She allows the
women to be as raw as they want, not complicating distinctions between how men
and women stereotypically speak about sexuality. Ruden allows her female characters to react toward sexuality in ways that are not demeaning, sensationalizing,
or exploitative. In short, she portrays women responding realistically toward sexuality, and this is not the case in other translations of Lysistrata. Ruden effectively
addresses feminism through her transgressive writing.
Without question, Aristophanes intended Lysistrata to be transgressive. Essentially, transgressive writing rebels against established ethical and moral societal
standards. It exposes the darker shades, bleaker terrains, and rougher contours of
humanity than presented in most mainstream fiction by focusing on the nihilistic
and existential vicissitudes associated within the human experience. Transgressive
fiction often includes content that is considered obscene, vulgar, and profane; and
it frequently raises questions concerning what is proper or improper, acceptable or
unacceptable, and even right or wrong. In “Naked Lunch and Dinner,” published in
The New York Times, Chun (1995) offers this definition: “Subversive, avant-garde,
bleak, pornographic—and these are compliments. Such words are used to describe
transgressive fiction, books pitched to young adults, written by authors descended
from William Burroughs and the Marquis de Sade, that explore aberrant sexual
practices, urban violence, drug use and dysfunctional families in graphic detail” (p.
49). Presented during a winter Dionysian festival in 411 BCE, Lysistrata was performed by an all-male cast in front of an exclusively male audience—the play was
presented in the midst of complete patriarchy. Translations that deflate the volume
of transgressivity in Lysistrata unfortunately decrease its potential to expose universal truths about human relationships. Significantly, the more translators attempt
to adapt Lysistrata to meet social and cultural prescriptions of taste and decorum,
13
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah Ruden’s…
the more they dilute the impact of the language and hence undermine the play’s
intended message. Early twentieth-century versions of Lysistrata are indeed prudish,
whereas some of the most recent translations are just as misrepresentational, going
to the other extreme of shocking for sake of effect.
Ruden provides the middle ground between these extremes. Her translation of
Lysistrata is certainly not dulled of its sharpness by an overarching adherence to
political correctness, nor is it an unsettling, distasteful, or intimidating reaction
directly against the politically correct. The general editor of the 2012 edition of the
Norton Anthology of World Literature inserts into the headnote what is comparable
to a disclaimer, warning readers about the transgressive nature of Ruden’s version:
The translation here is—appropriately—by a woman, the classical scholar
Sarah Ruden…. Aristophanes uses a lot of slang, and his language and
imagery are sometimes crude, deliberatively dirty, or shocking: it is therefore
justifiable to render his Greek into vivid, slangy, and sometimes obscene English. Those who do not want to encounter bad language ought to steer clear of
this play (p. 825).
The mention of Ruden’s gender is perhaps a ploy to counteract complaints that the
translation is either misogynistic or sexist, whereas knowing a woman translated
this potentially salacious or possibly prurient text may fend off complaints. Many of
the criticisms of Lysistrata in general, regardless of the translation, pertain to what
could be considered feminist theoretical positions against derogatory phallocentric
language, and there is no debate that this play is full of phallocentric references and
images. Granted, women seem to control power through their sexuality, but, in the
end, Lysistrata only unites Athenian and Spartan men for what could be viewed as
the objectification of a nude female form and a rudimentary truce that would end
the Peloponnesian War. Stuttard’s (2010) version of Reconciliation as Molly Faction
might be appropriate if the women are seen as only mollified preceding the likely
orgy at the play’s conclusion. Nonetheless, Lysistrata has now largely been appropriated by feminist ideology. Ruden (2012) points out in her first footnote in the
Norton anthology that Lysistrata’s name means “Dissolver of Armies” (p. 825). In
her earlier publication, Ruden (2003) adds that the name is taken from an actual
Athenian: “A real woman, the contemporary priestess of Athena Polias (‘of the
City’), appears to have had a similar name, Lysimache (‘Dissolver of Combat’)” (p.
1).1 Not surprisingly, Lysistrata has become a feminist icon, and a movement that
begins as a simple action to keep the husbands home from war becomes a complex
initiative for female empowerment through various platforms. In short, the play is
about more than a sex strike.
1
Almost every translation offers an introduction to Greek theater, but excellent sources of information
about the social, political, and cultural background of Lysistrata are McLeish’s (1980) The Theatre of
Aristophanes and Wiles’s (2000) Greek Theatre Performance: An Introduction. Ruden (2003) offers several chapters of contextual background in the section “Commentaries” in her publication of Lysistrata.
Ruden’s (2003) translation of Lysistrata was released initially through Hackett Publishing.
13
D. McCracken
In the introduction of Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution, Jeffreys (1990) explains how an allegiance to heterosexuality subsidizes heteropatriarchy. She argues that feminism has consistently worked through the paradigm
that female desire counteracts male desire, which in turn privileges male desire.
Jeffreys makes this comment about sexology in the early twentieth century: “Compulsory conscription into heterosexuality and the performance of the orgasm with
a man were seen to ensure woman’s subordination to her husband and the death
of feminism, lesbianism, manhating and spinsterhood” (p. 1). Jeffreys believes the
sexual revolution during the 1960s only altered how women remained subservient
to men: “There is no good reason to suppose that the sexologists changed step and
started believing, contrary to all their previous ideas, that women’s sexual response
to men would actually liberate women” (p. 2). She argues this paradigm based on
heterosexual desire continues to oppress women by subordinating their roles:
heterosexuality is seen as a political institution through which male dominance
is organized and maintained. Sex as we know it under male supremacy is the
eroticized power difference of heterosexuality. As a political system heterosexuality functions more perfectly than oppressive systems such as apartheid
or capitalism (pp. 3–4).
In response, Jeffreys proposes the obliteration of control through sex: “No liberation
is possible for women in a world in which inequality, and specifically the inequality
of women, is sexy. We need to envision, and start to build, a world in which the connection of power difference and aggression to sexual feelings will be unimaginable”
(p. 4). She advocates homosexual desire: “This is desire which eroticises equality
and mutuality,…. When equality is exciting, not just at the level of theory but in
love and sex, then the liberation of women becomes a real possibility” (p. 4). Jeffreys clarifies that heterosexual and homosexual refer to power inequality and equality: “Heterosexual desire can exist also in same sex relationships, because women
and men do not escape the heterosexual construction of their desire simply by loving their own sex. We all grow up in the political system of heterosexuality” (p. 2).
After a thorough coverage of feminism over the last century, Jeffreys asserts a total
rethinking of heterosexuality in terms of its reinforcement of heteropatriarchy, and
she demands a similar reconsideration of feminine power defined through the paradigm that grants dominance based on sexual desire.
In Fire with Fire, a widely recognized authority on third-wave feminism, Wolf
(1993) offers advice to women how they may overcome what is essentially heteropatriarchy. She explains that as females mature in a male-dominated society they
repress the “bad girl” in favor of the “good girl.” The feminine “inner child” conforms to societal expectations of how a female should act and provides attitudes and
behaviors to meet those established gender preconceptions. Wolf equates this inner
child with goodness and compassion (p. 318), qualities praised and reinforced in
a society dominated by heteropatriarchy. Wolf points out, however, that this inner
child has another side, one that is a “mischievous, boisterous, unregenerate twin, the
inner bad girl lurking in the female psyche” (p. 318). Wolf portrays the bad girl as
instructively reactionary against and rebellious toward this desired image essentially
constructed to maintain control:
13
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah Ruden’s…
Every molecule of the child seeks every pleasure. She is sensuous, grasping,
self-absorbed, fierce, greedy, megalomaniacal, and utterly certain that she is
entitled to have her ego, her power, and her way. For the few years between her
first consciousness and the curtailment of all her badness, her dreams are more
vivid and her world more saturated with passion and apparitions and ecstasy
than it will ever be again. She has no manners. She is a very naughty girl (p.
319).
Wolf claims this bad girl is sacrificed for the good girl. To become empowered, the
bad girl must be acknowledged.
This substantiates Jeffreys’s argument against a paradigm designed to enforce heterosexual desire, and while Wolf does not explicitly acknowledge Jeffreys, she is
defending Jeffreys’s call for homosexual desire. The act of rebellion, which is fundamentally what Wolf advocates, corresponds to the dissension initiated by Lysistrata,
women asserting their wills for the sake of configuring their own destinies. Wolf
offers her anticipated female readership what is comparable to her own call to arms,
and her language resembles the rhetoric voiced by Lysistrata to the Greek women at
the beginning of the play:
Now imagine that you can reach her when you need to. Imagine that you can
lay claim to the force of her desire, to her sky-high self-regard, when you are
fighting for your rights, negotiating about sex or housework, or putting a price
on your labors. Amplify her wishes to adult scope: the respect she wanted on
the playground, and in her fantasies of recognition, you want from Capitol
Hill. Do not call it “masculine,” that will to power in yourself, that desire to
transform the world and be seen. That is in us. It always has been. Use it to
walk through this historic door (p. 320).
Wolf is demanding women tap into their inner “bad girls,” and chances are women
who indeed connect with this inner force might express themselves with similar profanity, vulgarity, and obscenity that Lysistrata and the others speak. Jeffreys claims
throughout Anticlimax that women have been misled to demonstrate their solidity
through the same vehicles as men, thus Jeffreys notes the increase in lesbian pornography. Wolf contends women can be “naughty” without pandering to heteropatriarchy’s mode of illustrating power; by taking positions associated with homosexual
desire, women can construct their own methods of articulating control.
Ruden’s translation of Lysistrata demonstrates both Jeffreys’s and Wolf’s theories. After Lysistrata successfully draws the divergent group of women together,
Athenian friends and Spartan foes, the only tactic she can put on the table is an
obvious attack against heteropatriarchy. The husbands fight when they are away and
have sex when they are home. They determine when, where, how, all of the particulars related to the connubial union. From the onset, the women rebel against such an
outlandish idea as to give up intercourse, but the frequency of when they will have
coitus depends upon when their husbands decide they are ready to leave the warfront and return home for sexual relations. Women may absolutely love sex, but men
control in this clearly phallocentric universe when the women will be granted the
opportunity to participate in the enterprise. There is obvious heterosexual political
13
D. McCracken
inequality from the beginning of the play, and when the women decide to rebel, they
depend upon the only arsenal that would inflict pain—their erogenous zones of lips,
breasts, genitalia, and legs—in addition to other implements that enhance desire
such as perfume, gowns, and accouterments related to sexual enticement. In this
way, the women play the sexual game according to the rules already firmly established by the men.
The only way to combat heteropatriarchy effectively is to cultivate a new paradigm, what Jeffreys directly and Wolf indirectly refer to as one attributed to homosexual desire. The women use sex as a weapon to deter the men from waging war,
but what actually occurs, and this is what Ruden displays more effectively than
others, is that the women learn how to coalesce into an equal partnership regardless of territorial affiliation and to cooperate toward a unified goal, and surprisingly
the women forget about sex and care more about fidelity to a common cause. To
emphasize, on a cursory level, Lysistrata is about sex, with heterosexual orgasm
serving as the emblematic sign of success and completion; on a deeper plane, the
play illustrates the “equality and mutuality” Jeffreys and Wolf ascribe to homosexual
desire that is not limited to or defined by sexual consummation. Language signifies the women’s grassroots camaraderie, and Ruden’s translation best captures how
Jeffreys’s and Wolf’s homosexual desire is manifested through the women’s unified
expression, albeit this might be articulated through profanity in a transgressive way.
Translations that apply euphemisms betray this profoundly deeper meaning of the
play, and those that convolute or embellish only sensationalize the sexuality, thus
reinforcing heteropatriarchy by calling attention to the apparent phallocentricism.
Ruden’s translation offers the right balance between the two extremes.
On the surface, profanity just might be viewed as profanity, without nuance or
differentiation. The lewd language serves, however, as the linguistic connection
between the diverse Greek women. In a sense, this language enables these women
to construct this bond, and they use it within a clearly delineated context. People
assume various personas to adapt to the variety of rhetorical situations they constantly face, and depending upon the exigencies, they lapse into dialects and determine word choices, which undoubtedly range from the formal to the informal, based
upon their audiences within those discourse situations. In Sociolinguistics, Hudson
(1980) defines “speech community” simply as a “community based on language” (p.
25), and he cites several linguists who pinpoint qualities within this community as
people interact through using the same or common dialect that has verbal patterns or
signs that differentiate their community from others (pp. 25–26). Hudson states that
“registers,” or “varieties according to use” (p. 52), are governed by context, as language provided in one situation might not be appropriate in another instance. Hudson offers the following about “linguistic taboo,” or “so-called ‘four letter words’” in
English:
There is a very powerful convention which says that certain words, such as shit,
ought never to be used, and many people know these words but observe the
convention to the extent that from birth to death they never say them. . . . For
many people, the effect of linguistic taboo is to give these words extra value as
symbols of protest, for instance. It is particularly clear in these cases that the
13
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah Ruden’s…
social value of a word is just a matter of convention, since other words with
precisely the same meanings are not taboo (p. 53).
When people code-switch, which Hudson terms as using “different varieties at
different times” (56), they often draw upon taboo words in place of more socially
appropriate ones, especially, and this is extremely important in the case of Ruden’s
translation of Lysistrata, during occasions of protest. Not to condone profanity, but
there are moments when everyone expresses disdain, discomfort, or dissatisfaction
through a curse word, and if each person is honest with himself or herself, “darn” for
“damn” or “frig” substituted for “fuck” might seem more appropriate, but the meaning of that four-letter word still communicates the intention of the point as explicitly.
Sometimes, cursing is necessary to articulate the right level of protest, and, to dig to
the core, linguistic taboo is quite often the verbal adhesive necessary for communal
cohesion during times of revolt. During such instances, the right word makes all the
difference.
To prove the points asserted thus far, Ruden’s Lysistrata only needs to be compared to other translations. There are many interesting, innovative, and provocative
translations of this ancient play, and some of these probably classify more strictly
as adaptations of translations than translations themselves. For this study, however,
only the dominant translations will be assessed.2 These include those (with the particular year of the translation indicated in parentheses) by Rogers (1924), Murphy (1944), Parker (1963), Sommerstein (1973), Henderson (2000), Theodoridis
(2000), Roche (2004), and Stuttard (2010). Similarities between Ruden’s translation and these will be evaluated through four benchmark passages, chosen subjectively by the reactions of my World Literature I students. There were four particular places in which students said they were offended by the obscene, profane, and
vulgar language. I later showed students these same passages in the Murphy and
the Parker translations, and they were surprised by how meaning changed so significantly based on denotation and connotation. The selected sections are Lampito’s
meeting Lysistrata, mentioning of the Milesian sex product, Lysistrata’s frustration with her comrades, and Lampito named as agitator. These passages are not
long; nonetheless, the differences in degrees of language are representative of the
spectrum ranging from minimizing to maximizing the sexual references. All of the
translations compared maintain the integrity of Aristophanes’s purpose and are the
products of close attention to the Greek text. Although not extensive, this survey
illustrates how Ruden’s translation promotes what Jeffreys and Wolf term homosexual desire through the linguistic taboo of cursing.
My students claimed that they were shocked by how graphically Ruden describes
women fondling each other sexually at the beginning of the play. One student perceptively noticed that Athenian Lysistrata and her Spartan visitors are taking stock
2
I confess this selection is not based on objective data. I asked colleagues teaching the play what versions are used, and most recommended the Norton anthologies as well as pointing out the Rogers, Murphy, Parker, Sommerstein, and Roche translations are widely assigned in American classes. They also
reported the Theodoridis and Stuttard translations are getting much attention particularly for their transgressive appeal.
13
D. McCracken
of their arsenal through which they may fight masculine repression, evaluating their
own feminine sexual physicality. Actually, all of the translations offer a similar presentation of this scene. After the women have finally arrived to hear the news that
Lysistrata believes is so important, Lampito’s breasts are groped and Ismenia’s pubic
area is scrutinized. Ruden offers this exchange after Lampito’s somewhat masculine
physique is complimented:
LAMPITO: I’m in such shape I kick my own sweet ass.
CALONICE: And what a brace of boobs. How bountiful!
..........
MYRRHINE: [Peeking under woman’s clothes.]
Just look at what a broad and fertile plain.
CALONICE: [Peeking likewise.]
She’s even pulled the weeds. Now that is class. (lines 82–88, p. 828).3
There is little profanity in the dialogue, as “ass” and “boobs” are fairly commonplace
descriptors. In conservative translations of Lysistrata, Rogers (1963) uses “hurdies”
and “breast” (p. 13), whereas Murphy (1995) chooses “bum” and “breasts” (p.
486). Parker (2002) applies the hillbilly dialect: “Foot it out back’ards an’ toe yore
twitchet,” and after the “bosoms” are squeezed, allows Lampito to reply, “Shuckins,
whut fer you tweedlin’ me up so? I feel like a heifer come fair-time” (p. 730). More
derogatory, Sommerstein (1973) (p. 183), Henderson (2000) (p. 279), Roche (2005)
(p. 423), and Theodoridis (2001) use versions of “tits.” Every translation draws on
the landscape metaphor to compare the grooming of a bushy-haired mons pubis with
the manicuring of a lushly-leaved patch of turf, but the more recent translations are
more aggressive in their puns. Theodoridis (2001) writes, “Yea, with elegant little
itch-bitchy curly whirly penny royals growing so neatly and tightly all around that
lovely meadow!” and Stuttard states, “Little cunt-ry girl, is she? I bet her meadow’s
nicely mown…” (p. 96).
The second passage caused some red faces among my students, as masturbation
is something few openly discuss, let alone talk about in a public forum such as a
World Literature I class. Editors are usually very helpful assisting readers with footnotes describing exactly what is mentioned. To my astonishment, some students literally did not know what such a device is technically termed. One student called it,
with bureaucratic language, a “personal pleasure system”; another student labeled it
a “fuck stick.” In large classes, teasing out the function of the object in question has
sometimes been a delicate operation, one I both welcome and fear. Ruden calls this
device bluntly a dildo, without any elaboration:
3
I am using both line numbers and page numbers because not all of the translations use line numbers.
For clarity and consistency, I am using page numbers instead of guessing on which lines the passages
appear in the translations. Because Ruden’s translation in the Norton anthology is the central text in my
study, I have listed both the line numbers plus the page numbers only for her work: (lines 82–88, p. 828).
Unless indicated, all lines and pages from Ruden’s translation are from the third edition of the Norton
Anthology of World Literature published in 2012.
13
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah Ruden’s…
LYSISTRATA: And since the Milesians deserted us
(along with every scrap of lover here),
We’ve even lost those six-inch substitutes,
Those dinky dildos for emergencies.
If I could find a way to end this war,
Would you be willing partners?” (lines 107–12, p. 829)
All of the translations blame the Milesian revolt for the scarcity of the coveted
leather sexual aid. Rogers (1963) does not even come close to stating anything as
offensive as the word “dildo” (p. 15), as Roche (2005) also strays from this usage
entirely (p. 424). Parker’s (2002) homespun dialogue includes the neologism “handy
do-it-yourself kit” (p. 731). Interestingly, the size of the object varies with its vulgarity; the length of the tool gets longer as it becomes more transgressive. Sommerstein
(1973) calls them “six-inch Ladies’ Comforters” (p. 184), Henderson (2000) selects
“six-inch dildo” (p. 283), Murphy (1995) picks “eight-inch dingus” (p. 486), and
Stuttard (2010) has the longest, choosing “twelve-inch dildo” (p. 98), doubling the
length of Ruden’s implement. Theodoridis (2001) is the most profane with Lysistrata saying, “From the time those Milesians betrayed us, we can’t even find our
eight-fingered leather dildos. At least they’d serve as a sort of flesh-replacement for
our poor cunts….” Both the descriptions of the name of the device and its application have become more transgressive over time, and seen in comparison, Ruden is
not outrageous in her choices of words.
In the third controversial section, Ruden is not holding back when she portrays
the women’s reaction to Lysistrata’s plea for abstinence, and she is not sugar-coating Lysistrata’s frustrated exclamation as rebuttal. Ruden presents the following
dialogue:
CALONICE: ANYTHING else for me. I’d walk through fire,
But do without a dick? Be serious!
There’s nothing, Lysistrata, like a dick.
..........
LYSISTRATA: Oh, gender fit for boning up the butt!
No wonder we’re the stuff of tragedies:
Some guy, a bit of nookie, and a brat.
[To Lampito.] But you, sweet foreigner, if you alone
Stand with me, then we still could save the day.
Give me your vote!
LAMPITO: Shit, it’s no easy thing
To lie in bed alone without no dong. . .
But count me in. Peace we gotta have.
LYSISTRATA: The only woman in this half-assed horde! (lines 133–45, pp.
829–830).
All of the translations follow the plot in this section—stressing anxious reluctance
toward giving up sex and Lysistrata’s call for solidarity—but word choice varies
13
D. McCracken
considerably in how they depict the event. Rogers (1963) offers no profanity or sexual references (p. 17). Murphy (1995) has Lampito comment stoically, “Tis cruel
hard, by my faith, for a woman to sleep alone without her nooky; but for all that, we
certainly do need peace” (p. 487), which in contrast makes Parker’s (2002) somewhat hilarious: “Hit’s right onsettlin’ fer gals/To sleep all lonely-like, withouten no
humpin’” (p. 732). Sommerlein (1973) (p. 185), Henderson (2000) (p. 287), Roche
(2005) (p. 425), and Theodoridis (2001) mention “prick” in their selections, with
Henderson (2000) also applying “hard-on” (p. 287) and Theodoridis (2001) using
“cock.” Surprisingly, Stuttard (2010) has Lampito (now with the softer name Claire)
say, “Well, it’s not easy for me to sleep alone without my Willy in bed with me. But
as things stand. . . We must have peace!” (p. 99). The closest comparison to Lysistrata’s tirade in Ruden’s translation comes from Parker (2002):
Utter sluts, the entire sex! Will-power,
nil. We’re perfect raw material for Tragedy,
the stuff of heroic lays. “Go to bed with a god
and then get rid of the baby”—that sums us up!
[Turning to LAMPITO.] –Oh, Spartan, be a dear. If you stick by me,
Just you, we still may have a chance to win.
Give me your vote (p. 732).
Parker (2002) rivals the intensity of Ruden’s words with the ridiculing chastisement “Utter sluts.”
The fourth passage occurs right after Myrrhine has carried out the supreme
example of teasing Cinesias, who finally considers consulting a prostitute to
ease his sexual tension. My students were very uncomfortable with two words in
Ruden’s translation, “pussy” and “twat.” In some translations, the dialogue is not
between Cinesias and a Spartan but between the Magistrate and a Spartan. Ruden
offers this conversation between the two sexually exasperated males:
SPARTAN HERALD: No, Lampito—I think it was her plan.
And then all over Sparta, when they heard,
The women thundered from the starting line—
There went our pussy in a cloud of dust.
CINESIAS: How are you making out, then?
SPARTAN HERALD: Hey we’re not.
The whole damn town’s bent double like we’s kicked.
Before we lay a finger on a twat,
The women say we gotta all wise up
And make a treaty with other Greeks.
CINESIAS: They got together and plotted this,
All of the women. I can see it now.
Quick, have the Spartans send ambassadors,
Fully empowered to reach a settlement.
And on the evidence of this my dick
I’ll make our Council choose some legates too (lines 975–89, p. 854).
13
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah Ruden’s…
Rogers’s (1963) translation obscurely refers to the vagina: “They’ll no be couthie
wi’ the laddies mair” (p. 97). Parker (2002) is not as abstract but still is ambiguous: “Cain’t even tetch them little old gals on the moosey” (p. 766). On the contrary, Murphy (1995) explains the predicament objectively with “our women
won’t let us touch them” (p. 506). Sommerstein’s (1973) portrayal is similar to
Parker’s (2002), applying creative synonyms for female body parts. His Herald
reports that the women “pit up a Keep Oot notice over their whatnots,” and then
the character broadcasts, “the women won’t even let us sae much as touch their
knobs” (p. 222). Henderson (2000) has the Herald call the lady parts “pork pies,”
with him adding “The women won’t let us even touch their cherries” (p. 405).
Theodoridis (2001) and Roche (2005) offer “myrtle” in their translations. Theodoridis’s (2001) Herald proclaims, “the women just won’t let us get anywhere
near their myrtle bush”; Roche’s (2005) declares, “The women won’t as much
as let us touch their myrtle berries” (465). In place of Ruden’s “dick,” Theodoridis (2001) uses “prick,” and Roche (2005) applies “prong” (465). Stuttard (2010)
also alludes to vegetation by saying the women “won’t let us within so much as
touching distance of their sacred groves” (141). Instead of “dick,” Stuttard (2010)
stresses the phallocentricism in the scene:
What we’ve got’s an international conspiracy among our women. That much is
now clear. So, we must lose no time. We must convene a summit meeting here,
with representatives from every state, each man with plenipotentiary decisionmaking powers. I’ll go to parliament straight way and have them elect delegates. My wand of office will provide the requisite authority (p. 141).
A look at these sections demonstrates that Ruden’s translation is really about in the
middle in terms of offensive language.
The distance between Ruden’s version and earlier ones seems much broader
than that between her translation and those by her contemporaries. The social
climate has changed considerably since Rogers (1963) and Murphy (1995) published their translations, but since the 1960s (when there were several diversely
provocative versions of the play) translators have for the most part been given
the freedom to present Aristophanes’s raucous verbiage as the ancient author
intended. Ruden neither masks the sexual language nor obfuscates the sexual
meaning. Ruden offers the profanities as a form of feminine linguistic codeswitching that allows the women to connect through their shared language. In
almost every version of Lysistrata, the women decide to partake in a ceremony
that will seal their alliance, and they draw on precedent—or what the men normally did—for this ritual. The women parody male mythic bonding by pronouncing their sisterhood through the sacrifice of the winesack. Their cohesiveness is
strengthened in a similar manner through their communal cursing. This language
eventually loses its sexual meaning and assumes more rhetorical meaning, as
their declared discourse of rebellion. The words are not devoid of their sexual
signification, but they transform into codes readily identifiable to these women.
Notice the men cannot even interpret their own erections, as when the Athenian
and Spartan men confer to assess the damage that has been inflicted and ask each
other what is protruding from their groins. The women are in tune with each other
13
D. McCracken
and readily interpret the signs embedded within the obscenities. As a result, these
women ultimately move beyond simply imitating male behavior associated with
rebellion, which Jeffreys and Wolf attribute to heterosexual desire, and foster
their own brand of civil disobedience, through Jeffreys’s designated homosexual
desire and Wolf’s determined “bad girl” persona. The deciding moment is when
the women come together as one at the Acropolis, and the old women feel selfconfident enough as a result of this burgeoning female solidarity to reconcile with
the old men. Ruden’s translation is transgressive, but it maintains an important
equilibrium between boring and shocking. Undoubtedly, Ruden’s version advocates women’s rights, and her women become unlikely compatriots toward the
goal of saving Greece, an unbelievably difficult task that they assume with courage, bravery, and honor. They do not address this task in a masculine way; they
achieve this goal by moving from a feminine perspective to a much more significant position, from that of all humanity.
Ruden herself has claimed this rhetorical stance as the voice of the humane,
which transcends gender. In the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, right after Ruden’s
translation was published, there is an exchange worth consulting because it typifies how many readers view Ruden’s Lysistrata. Reviewer Clayton (2003) initially
praises Ruden’s translation because it “represents a good balance between [the] two
extremes” pertaining to “rough language” and authorial direction. Clayton (2003)
later claims Ruden might lean too far toward vulgarity:
Indeed, one might find her use of lewd slang excessive. It is certainly extensive. . . . When Ruden does stray from the Greek, it is often for the sake of a
kind of catchy crudeness,. . . . Nevertheless some readers will no doubt feel
that she goes too far. Aristophanes is crude enough; why add more?
Clayton (2003) concludes that she recommends Ruden’s translation for general
reading but not for particular classical study, especially if considered with Ruden’s
commentaries following her text. Ruden’s (2004) response begins by mentioning
many of her translations are verified by (if not predicated on) Henderson’s widely
respected translation work, and this is followed by her assertion, “A more genteel
translation than mine would simply not do justice to Aristophanes.” Ruden (2004)
defends herself against “exaggerate[ing] Aristophanes’ dirtiness [for her] own evil
ends” with an extremely profound comment: “But a flat, unattractive translation presented to beginning students and the lay public as literature, as the work of a great
mind, is the most catastrophic kind of unfaithfulness.” Ruden (2004) then offers
crucial statements that reinforce why her translation is best, regardless what Clayton thinks. Ruden (2004) recognizes that her opponents are fundamentally against
“popularizing the Classics,” and she rightly calls out her discipline for perpetuating
the production of unappealing translations that offer no redeeming value to readers’
lives and, as Ruden (2004) claims, causes “students in introductory courses [to] just
assume that ancient literature is no fun.” Likewise, Ruden (2004) correctly points
out these students are “simply going to make the quickest exit possible, from Classics or from the humanities altogether.” Holford-Strevens (2004) responds with a
short but terse defense of Ruden. Of her four points, two of these are succinctly
astute: “People who dislike obscenity should leave Aristophanes alone,” and “a
13
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah Ruden’s…
translation that makes the original not seem worth reading has no place even on the
facing page of a critical edition.”
Many of my students who at first rebelled against reading Ruden’s Lysistrata
would probably respond with a resounding “No” to Clayton’s question whether or
not Ruden should have increased the crudeness of Aristophanes’s already licentious
language. Some of them even said during out class meeting, “Why did that character
have to use that word?” The answer simply is the character used that word because
it was the right word in that particular context, and Ruden was unafraid, similar to
the Greek women, to state the word that was necessary in that context. When I contacted General Editor Puchner (personal communication, August 8, 2013) via email
about his decision to select Ruden’s Lysistrata for the Norton anthology, he offered
this response:
And there are always objections, no matter what translation one uses. The
thing is that Ruden is closest to the Greek original, which is quite shockingly
profane—deliberately so. Perhaps this is a good place to start, that is by turning the objections of students (and perhaps also of teachers) into a teachable
moment, discussing changing mores and perhaps also how it was that the
Greeks liked to watch high tragedy and low comedy back to back.
Puchner echoed Ruden’s declaration that classical scholars must make translations more attractive to students. I told him that the entire discussion concerning
why Ruden’s version was included prompted students to raise additional questions
about authorship and intent as well as provided them with insight into the nuances
of reading and interpretation. Puchner (personal communication, August 8, 2013)
commented, “Clearly, they are learning something from Lysistrata, perhaps because
it is so provocative. What more could a teacher want?” This is certainly Ruden’s
contention.
In her email response to me about Lysistrata, Ruden emphasized the authenticity
as well as the necessity of her translation for current readers. She told me that she
was inspired by traditional ritualistic events that she had witnessed during which
strong rock-solid women led assaults against questionable male authorities. In particular, Ruden (personal communication, November 9, 2013) told me to tell my students that in Africa “the sight of a mature woman’s genitals is a powerful curse, and
women have stripped to confront and shame both multinational corporate thugs and
rapacious tribal leaders.” In an earlier email, after I told Ruden that students had
made the comparison between Parker’s translation and her translation to The Beverly
Hillbillies and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in addition to relating Lysistrata to Kim Kardashian, Ruden (personal communication, November 7, 2013) sent
what I think is the essence of her translation:
Pushy, thoughtlessly self-indulgent—that certainly describes the female characters of Lysistrata, to a degree. But Aristophanes has an idealistic element
that reality TV seems to lack: his women are obsessed with clothes and parties
and squabbling and getting it on, AND they’re devoted to their various cities
and Greece as a whole—Greece as epitomizing (in their minds) the best of
the world’s politics and culture. I can’t think of any women in our pop culture
13
D. McCracken
who show two normally conflicting sides of the human personality working
together to such great effect, who communicate, “Yeah, I’m just a ditz or a
harridan, but I’m the ditz or harridan who’s going to save civilization, because
there’s nobody else to do it.”
Contrary to what Ruden states, there are such women in American culture. Of
course, people have strong personal opinions about the women on the Housewives
of Beverly Hills, and they have equally strong feelings toward Kim Kardashian (perhaps all of the Kardashian females). One only has to watch a documentary such
as MacMillan Films’s Lysistrata: Female Power and Democracy (one of many commentaries) or to google “Lysistrata Project” (there are various websites) to witness
how the play has been embraced symbolically to advocate rights for women in various forums.
Many may poke fingers at these women and question their motivation, and they
believe, maybe as Ruden does, that these personalities cannot merge the “conflicting
sides of the human personality.” The truth is that these women are strong-willed,
they are aggressive, and they get exactly what they want. These women are frequently admired for their sexuality, and they will certainly exploit their carnal assets
for the sake of publicity; however, they are also not likely to back down from fighting psychological, judicial, and financial wars with competitors (probably male) for
power. Ideally, they epitomize many tenets affiliated with third-wave feminism, and
they could easily serve as Lysistratas in their own rights. Participants in the Women’s March events since January 2017 or in the Me Too (#MeToo) movement since
October 2017 have certainly demonstrated this courage and fortitude. Case in point,
Sarah McBride, the first transgender American to speak at a major political convention, recently disclosed that she was sexually assaulted. Dastagir reports in a June
13, 2018, article in USA Today:
Sarah McBride wasn’t sure if she could do it. She wasn’t sure she should. She
watched that Sunday in October as her Twitter and Facebook feeds filled with
stories from survivor after survivor—accounts that would eventually stir the
conscience of a nation that had long refused to reckon with its culture of sexual
violence. After a restless night contemplating whether she was strong enough
to lift the weight of silence, she gathered her courage and tweeted those devastating words: “Me Too.”
Moreover, Ellen DeGeneres, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, Jenny
McCarthy, and other strong female celebrities could aptly become “the ditz or harridan who’s going to save civilization.” Many female actors (several comedians who
regularly use profanity) have recently been broadcast in the media for their stances
on women’s rights. Words indeed matter. For a negative example, one need only
consider the current controversies sparked by Roseanne Barr’s and Samantha Bee’s
comments about politicians: Barr made a contemptable racial slur via analogy about
former President Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, but Bee was criticized for perhaps a
greater social faux pas by calling First Lady Melania Trump “the most offensive vulgar term for a female in the English language,” a “cunt” (Puente, 2018). For a positive instance, one need only look at Time magazine’s December 18, 2017, issue to
13
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah Ruden’s…
see a real-life coalition of advocates deemed “The Silence Breakers.” Time’s famous
Person of the Year is a group of diverse females (and some males) who decided to
take action similar to those in Aristophanes’s play (Felsenthal 2017).4 If there were
a Lysistrata in this group, Tarana Burke could assume this position. Little known
before 2017, Burke initiated in 2006 what has become the Me Too movement (Garcia, 2017).
Ruden recognizes the urgency associated with women transforming the world,
and this is why her translation is so powerful. In “Translating Aristophanes’ Lysistrata: Problems, Prospects, Prominently Pronged Protagonists,” Ruden (1994) provides her rationale for refusing to perpetuate the tired business of the scholastic
industry:
My determination not to translate strictly or literally is based on a deep annoyance with traditional methods of translation of Classical drama, methods
which seem to me to be limited by Classicists’ inability to enjoy anything, or
else by their inability to communicate their enjoyment by creating a language
which can hold an audience’s attention on its own. The result, in my view, has
been a sad de-emphasis of language in productions of Greek and Roman plays
on the modern stage.
Ruden (1994) is a fan of the transgressive: “Obscenity—go for it. Like rhyme,
Anglo-Saxonisms and bawdy slang, though not funny in themselves, are good for
summing up jokes and easy to remember.” In her response to Clayton, Ruden
(2004) sternly admonishes academics who serve as gatekeepers defending the
sacred textual ground from the defilement or desecration of the classics from
translators with transgressive leanings. Ruden probably feels just like Lysistrata
when her fictional alter ego exclaims in frustration, “Well, in a word, our movement’s getting fucked” (line 699, p. 845). Both Ruden and Lysistrata understand
that they must battle fortified systems of power by appealing to basic human appetites, the instinctive drives that motivate toward change. Ruden (1994) writes,
“Classicists should know that it’s resistance to popularizing that turns it into a
force of nature, that turns a low-key romp into the siege scene in Aristophanes.”
Many hope that more academics listen to Ruden’s call for a lively, enthusiastic,
and, dare say, transgressive approach to the classics. Ruden speaks to the current generation of young women as well as to the new breed of classical scholars,
ever mindful of the relationship between presentation and context. One might ask
which translation is the closest to Aristophanes’s original Greek; whether “dick,”
“prick,” or “prong,” for instance, is closest to peos? A response may be that the
translators manipulate the raw material of the language to promote their agendas, politicizing the objective text for subjective reasons. In this regard, Ruden
4
Those focused on in the Time issue are Isabel Pascual, Adama Iwu, Ashley Judd, Susan Fowler, Taylor
Swift, Alyssa Milano, Tarana Burke, Selma Blair, Sara Gelser, Lindsay Meyer, Sandra Pezqueda, Rose
McGowan, Wendy Walsh, Lindsey Reynolds, Juana Melara, Sandra Muller, Terry Crews, Celeste Kidd,
Jessica Cantlon, Megyn Kelly, Jane Merrick, Zelda Perkins, Terry Reintke, Bex Bailey, Amanda Schmitt,
Blaise Godbe Lipman, in addition to a few anonymous women.
13
D. McCracken
translates Aristophanes’s language to address the rhetorical situation concerning
a contemporary audience. She understands the exigence—the urgency has been
explained through Jeffreys’s and Wolf’s theories—by constraining language for
a rhetorical purpose (refer to Bitzer, 1968). Translators who decided on “cunt”
while studying Aristophanes’s actual Greek were not that different from Bee
when she chose (not extemporaneously but through planning and taping) to use
that word. Both the translators and Bee selected that particular word for effect.
Not the hypocrite, and certainly practicing what she preaches, Ruden “popularizes” Lysistrata for a current audience, and this immediacy is critical to the success
of her play. People may respond unknowingly to the honest depiction of Jeffreys’s
and Wolf’s ideas concerning homosexual desire. As Puchner (personal communication, August 8, 2013) mentions, readers may find Ruden’s translation provocative,
yet that provocation will eventually lead to discussion about the relevant and timely
issues the play explores. Ruden finds the creative intermediate between transgressive
excess and deficiency to hit her mark for readers familiar with the types of programming typically shown on Adult Swim or the frequently broadcast dark comedies or
socially distasteful late-night shows on Comedy Central. Contemporary audiences
are perhaps desensitized to sexual innuendo, inference, or connotation from even
major network programming. The Councilor reacts to an old woman’s threat of
“Lay one cuticle/On her, and I shall beat you till you shit” (lines 440–41, p. 838), by
replying, “Such language! Where’d the other archer go?/Get this one first. Just hear
that potty mouth!” (lines 442–43, p. 838). The Councilor does not understand the
function of the old woman’s word choice as a device to solidify the Greek woman
toward one cause, saving civilization. Fortunately, most readers who maintain an
open mind and suspend their moral prejudices see how Ruden’s Lysistrata effectively advocates feminist values through a transgressive medium. I can confirm this
by how my own World Literature I students responded after they took deep breathes
and saw the play not as a stuffy piece of classical literature but looked at it through
the same lens with which they viewed popular culture.
References
Aristophanes. (1963). Lysistrata (B. B. Rogers, Trans.). In Aristophanes (Vol. 3, pp. 2–123). Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Aristophanes. (1973). Lysistrata (A. Sommerstein, Trans.). In Aristophanes, The Acharnians, The Clouds,
Lysistrata (pp. 175–235). New York, NY: Penguin.
Aristophanes. (1995). Lysistrata (C. T. Murphy, Trans.). In P. Davis, G. Harrison, D. M. Johnson, P. C.
Smith, & J. F. Crawford (Eds.), Western literature in a world context (Vol. 1, pp. 481–512). New
York, NY: St. Martin’s.
Aristophanes. (2000). Lysistrata (J. Henderson, Trans.). In Aristophanes (Vol. 3, pp. 253–441). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Aristophanes. (2001). Lysistrata (G. Theodoridis, Trans.). Bacchicstage. Retrieved on June 10, 2018 from
https​://bacch​icsta​ge.wordp​ress.com/arist​ophan​es/lysis​trata​/.
Aristophanes. (2002). Lysistrata (D. Parker, Trans.). In S. Lawall (Gen. Ed.), The Norton anthology of
world literature (2nd ed., Vol. A, pp. 725–778). New York, NY: Norton.
13
“Just hear that potty mouth!”: an argument for Sarah Ruden’s…
Aristophanes. (2003). Lysistrata (S. Ruden, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Aristophanes. (2005). Lysistrata (P. Roche, Trans.). In Aristophanes, The complete plays (pp. 415–478).
New York, NY: New American Library.
Aristophanes. (2010). Lysistrata (D. Stuttard, Trans.). In D. Stuttard (Ed.), Looking at Lysistrata: Eight
essays and a new version of Aristophanes’s provocative comedy (pp. 91–153). London: Bristol
Classical.
Aristophanes. (2012). Lysistrata (S. Ruden, Trans.). In M. Puchner (Gen. Ed.), The Norton anthology of
world literature (3rd ed., Vol. A, pp. 823–862). New York, NY: Norton.
Bitzer, L. (1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1(1), 1–14.
Chun, R. (1995, April 23) Naked lunch and dinner. The New York Times, pp. 49, 52.
Clayton, B. (2003, December). Sarah Ruden (trans.), Lysistrata. Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Retrieved
June 10, 2018 from http://bmcr.brynm​awr.edu/2003/2003-12-25.html.
Dastagir, A. E. (2018, June 13). She was sexually assaulted within months of coming out. She isn’t alone.
USA Today. Retrieved June 13, 2018 from https​://www.usato​day.com/story​/news/2018/06/13/sarah​
-mcbri​de-gay-survi​vors-helpe​d-launc​h-me-too-but-rates​-lgbt-abuse​-large​ly-overl​ooked​/69209​4002/.
Felsenthal, E. (2017), December 7). Time’s 2017 person of the year: The silence breakers. Time. Retrieved
June 13, 2018 from http://time.com/magaz​ine/us/50553​35/decem​ber-18th-2017-vol-190-no-25-u-s/.
Garcia, S. E. (2017, October 20). The woman who created #MeToo long before hashtags. The New York
Times. Retrieved June 13, 2018 from https​://www.nytim​es.com/2017/10/20/us/me-too-movem​enttaran​a-burke​.html.
Holford-Strevens, L. (2004, February). Holford-Stevens on Ruden on Clayton on Ruden. Bryn Mawr
Classical Review. Retrieved June 10, 2018 from http://bmcr.brynm​awr.edu/2004/2004-02-46.html.
Hudson, R. A. (1980). Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jeffreys, S. (1990). Anticlimax: A feminist perspective on the sexual revolution. New York, NY: New
York University Press.
MacMillan Films. (Producer). (2009). Lysistrata: Female power and democracy [DVD].
McLeish, K. (1980). The theatre of Aristophanes. New York, NY: Taplinger.
Puente, M. (2018, May 31). Samantha Bee vs. Roseanne Barr: Trump joins chorus accusing media of
double standard. USA Today. Retrieved June 13, 2018 from https​://www.usato​day.com/story​/
life/2018/05/31/saman​tha-bee-vs-rosea​nne-barr-doubl​e-stand​ard-twitt​er-react​s/66123​9002/.
Ruden, S. (1994, August). Translating Aristophanes’ Lysistrata: Problems, prospects, prominently
pronged protagonists. Didaskalia: The Journal for Ancient Performance, 1(3). Retrieved on June
10, 2018 from http://www.didas​kalia​.net/issue​s/vol1n​o3/ruden​.html.
Ruden, S. (2003). Commentaries. In Aristophanes, Lysistrata (S. Ruden, Trans.) (pp. 74–118). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Ruden, S. (2004, January 23). Ruden on Clayton on Ruden. Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Retrieved on
June 10, 2018 from http://bmcr.brynm​awr.edu/2004/2004-01-23.html.
Wiles, D. (2000). Greek theatre performance: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolf, N. (1993). Fire with fire: The new female power and how it will change the 21st century. New York,
NY: Random House.
13